What's Mine and Yours(76)
Gee shrugged, zinged one of his castmates.
“Don’t be so backwards. I’ve never seen you talk so much to anybody.”
“She’s the one who does most of the talking.”
“Unh-hunh.”
“And she’s not talking to me today.”
They were still playing when the auditorium doors burst open and Noelle’s boyfriend swooped in. He was a tall boy who wore rubber bracelets, his red hair sculpted into spikes. He had on a pair of reflective shades, even if they were indoors. His knee-length jacket fanned behind him; a wallet chain swung from the belt loop of his pants. He sat in the front row, as if his presence wouldn’t perturb them, disrupt their flow. He was skinny and menacing and pale.
It was Noelle who eventually said, “Mr. Riley, it’s ten past,” and Mr. Riley looked deflated, told everyone they were free to go.
Noelle met Duke, and he shoved his face at hers to kiss her, slipped a hand into the back pocket of her jeans. It was territorial and nasty. Gee looked away. Adira caught him and raised her eyebrows at him. Her face seemed to say, Yeah right, you don’t like her.
Adira linked arms with Shawn, and they walked out of the auditorium together, laughing. Somehow, they had coupled up. Gee had missed the signs. Maybe it was the real reason so many of them had joined the play. When it came to love, few people could resist. Everyone wanted it badly, whether they said so or not. Even his mother was different when it came to Ray: his memory, his name. But even that love hadn’t lasted; she had put him away like a secret. People loved each other for a while, then they forgot; they buried one another.
It was funny that Gee had been cast as the only man in the play who was really loved. Angelo and the duke both wound up with women, too, but those couplings were strange. It was one of the reasons Mr. Riley said Measure for Measure was a problem play; it ended with marriages instead of deaths, so it wasn’t a tragedy, but it was too dark, too unsettling, to be a comedy either.
Gee was the last to leave, and he slipped out the back door so he wouldn’t run into his castmates on the front steps, hanging out and making plans for Cedar’s or the mall. He’d sneak out to the parking lot and find Linette, ride home, race up to his room, where he’d lie down first thing and rub himself fast and rough, a picture of some nameless woman in his head, one with big nipples, an open mouth, one who was saying his name.
He was starting his daydream, the illusion keeping him company, when he ran into Noelle, crouched against the side of the school building. She was poking a twig at the underside of her big boots, scraping off grass and congealed dirt. Her mouth was twisted into a frown, and she was red-faced, as if she’d been screaming.
“What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you,” she said, and Gee didn’t believe her.
“What about your boyfriend? You left with him.”
“He stopped by cause he was helping our mothers do something for the campaign. You know that bulletin board outside the main office where parents can post notices? Apparently, they took it over, papered it three inches thick. The secretary is the only one who stays in the main office this late, and she’s a sympathizer. She goes to Duke’s parents’ church.”
“What did they put up?”
“Flyers. Stupidity. I don’t know. I almost dumped him on the spot.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Noelle shrugged, and Gee understood. If he had somebody, he couldn’t imagine dumping them either.
“He talks about the transfers like they’re not kids we know. Like he’s not talking about you and Adira and my friends.”
“Maybe he does know who he’s talking about.”
Noelle paused for a moment, considering it.
“Will you go with me to see what they posted? It feels less scary if I go with you.”
“All right,” Gee said, not because he wanted to see, but because he wanted to be with Noelle.
At the front entrance, a few kids loitered on the steps, laughing and punching each other on the shoulders, running around the railing. The parents who had papered the bulletin board were gone now, and so was Duke.
The halls were empty. Besides the drama club, the only students who stayed at school this late were the jocks, and they were still off practicing at the fields. The school officer nodded at them as they reentered, genial and disinterested in whatever they were up to. Gee wondered if he’d done the same as the parents traipsed in with their stacks of paper and rolls of tape.
When they turned in to the hall toward the main office, they saw the walls of the corridor were covered in huge white sheets of paper, some as long as Gee’s torso. They spread from the baseboards of the floor up to the ceiling. They were taped up in crooked rows, haphazard and overlapping, so the pages seemed to have erupted from the walls.
Gee and Noelle crept deeper into the hallway, and Gee saw that they weren’t flyers; they were newspaper clippings the parents had printed and blown up. It took him a few moments to realize the pattern, but the headlines gave it away.
First Shooting Death of the Year read one. Former High School Teacher Charged with Assault. Eleven-Year-Old in Critical Condition. Late-Night Flat Tire Scam: What You Need to Know.
The articles spanned years. Burglaries, kidnappings, drug busts, all on the east side. Gee could see they had printed and posted many of the articles more than once; the duplicates were of the most gruesome stories.